“This problem will destroy New York City. … We are all going to be affected by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000, and I’m telling you now, at 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose it,” he said. for follow-up.
Republicans praised Adams, jumping on his words to promote the party’s stance on reducing immigration and blaming the White House for not doing more.
“The first step to solving a problem is to admit that you have one. Thank you Mayor Adams for being honest in this clip about the scale of the migrant crisis in New York,” the rep said. Nick LaLota (RY) write the X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Now he must repeal New York’s sanctuary policies and President Biden must reinstate the stay in Mexico to help solve the problem.”
house tenant Kevin McCarthy also seized on Adams’ ongoing comments that the Biden administration and the state need to do more to help migrants find jobs and provide more aid to the city. Republicans are already making the migrant issue in New York a campaign issue in the run-up to the 2024 election in key House races.
“The situation has gotten so bad that even leaders in Democratic strongholds like New York and Massachusetts are throwing in the towel,” McCarthy said in a statement Tuesday. “They can’t handle the pressure the massive influx of people is putting on their city and state. »
The mayor has long pointed to the recent wave of migration as a financial burden on the city and one of the reasons he has had to order multiple rounds of budget cuts to city agencies.
So far, the direct impact on municipal services has been limited, with most of the savings coming from eliminating unfilled positions and re-estimating health expenditure.
But Adams hinted there would be further cuts in the next budget cycle.
“We have a $12 billion deficit that we are going to have to reduce,” he said. “Every service in this city is going to be affected.”
Adams has repeatedly called for more federal funding, saying asylum-seeking migrants arriving in the city shouldn’t be New York’s only problem.
He directly challenged Biden, causing tension between the two Democrats. It didn’t give Adams great results.
The city received about $140 million in federal funds, while spending about $1.5 billion in the last fiscal year to house and serve migrants.
City hall expects spending to grow rapidly, to $4 billion in the current year. Adams also called for a “decompression strategy” at the border to slow migration to New York and at the White House to speed up work permits for asylum seekers, so they can legally earn a job. income and support themselves.
But later that night, when a town hall resident was in despair over the state of the city, Adams regained his usual confidence.
“Don’t be consumed by the enormity of the problems we face,” he said. “There’s not a day that I don’t wake up and say, ‘We got it.'”
Cnn